—“The real difference between Chicago and MIT macro is Chicago’s commitment to rules over discretion. Milton Friedman’s endorsement of a constant 3% increase in the money supply was meant to minimize the chance of hyperinflation and to make running the Fed a boring job such that investors had clear expectations of how Policy would be set. When “leaders” have discretion with respect to how they set policy, they have more fun on the jobbut “uncertainty” increases and this reduces investment.”—Matthew Kahn

In other words, the Chicago program seeks to define rules that will eliminate discretion. The MIT program seeks to identify opportunities for discretion. Rule of law = Lack of Discretion.

I wasn’t able to come up with that myself. And it’s wonderful.

MORE

ANTI-KRUGMAN — THIS IS SO GOOD THAT I HAVE TO POST MORE OF IT.

—-“At M.I.T., however, Keynes never went away. To be sure, stagflation showed that there were limits to what policy can do. But students continued to learn about the imperfections of markets and the role that monetary and fiscal policy can play in boosting a depressed economy. And the M.I.T. students of the 1970s enlarged on those insights in their later work. Mr. Blanchard, for example, showed how small deviations from perfect rationality can have large economic consequences; Mr. Obstfeld showed that currency markets can sometimes experience self-fulfilling panic.”—-Paul Krugman

“Point #1 Note the eagerness to introduce ideas from behavioral economics into economic policy making. A dangerous precedent arises here. If the “people are foolish“, then this creates an ugly elitist possibility that only the wise technocrats (the MIT graduates) can protect us. I don‘t like this worldview on a number of levels. Moral hazard lurks when sophisticated investors and economic decision makers are aware that the technocrats will step in and “save the world“ when ugly economic events take place (such as a plunging stock market, or rising unemployment).

“Point #2: The real difference between Chicago and MIT macro is Chicago‘s commitment to rules over discretion. Milton Friedman‘s endorsement of a constant 3% increase in the money supply was meant to minimize the chance of hyperinflation and to make running the Fed a boring job such that investors had clear expectations of how Policy would be set. When “leaders“ have discretion with respect to how they set policy, they have more fun on the job but “uncertainty“ increases and this reduces investment.

“Point #3; Dr. Krugman also refuses to acknowledge the power of Ed Prescott‘s work on time consistency and policy. Clear rules of the game create dynamically stable rules and this fosters investment. In Dr. Krugman‘s short run focus on the business cycle, he ignores the long run growth implications caused by the activist policies that he supports.

“Point #4; In the absence of randomized trials, the MIT trained technocrats (the 5 people listed above) do not actually know what policies are effective in mitigating business cycles. If they know that they do not know how the macro economy really works, then does this affect Dr. Krugman‘s optimism that MIT has won the policy debates. His piece isn‘t that modest (or honest) about the modeling uncertainty that now exists in modern macro economics. He makes the past debates sound settled. If he attended MIT‘s current 1st year PHD macro sequence, he would see a variety of different models being worked on and taught and I bet that the policy conclusions are very sensitive to the modeling choices.” —- Matthew Kahn (Environmental and Urban Economics )

—“I’ve seen you criticize Mises and I’m not sure I’ve fully understood your critique. Would it be fair to compare your criticism to modern science’s correction of the Greeks? I’m referring to the definition of modern science as inductive reasoning based on observation (empiricism) in contrast to the Greeks’ deduction based on self-evident truth. (Intuition vs. sensory information)”—

ANSWER

Well, if it was easily reducible to something simple, someone would have figured this problem out before. And it wouldn’t have stumped mises, hayek, popper and dozens of others in other fields.”—

Or, I could spend a little effort and tell you that a whole bunch of philosophers failed to expand the scientific method in the 19th and 20th when our means of instrumental measurement exceeded our understanding of the limits of our perceptions.

Mises is one of the philosophers who failed. In failing he created a pseudoscience. Whereas the others merely failed to understand what they had discovered.

Economics is as empirical as any other science. But just as we cannot state that a formula is existentially possible in mathematics without a proof that it can be constructed from possible mathematical operations, we cannot state that an economic statement is possible if we cannot construct it from possible human operations. Conversely, we cannot possibly deduce all of economics. Yet we can explain all of economics if we try.

Mises made a profound mistake of conflating a negative test – a form of falsification – with a positive means of discovery.

He made the error all germans did: that justification can be used in matters of science. It cannot be.

Contracts and moral arguments can be justified, but truth propositions merely survive criticism.

This is a very advanced bit of a failure of philosophy in intellectual history so it’s not trivial to grasp.

1) The term Counter-Enlightenment was taken already. But the Dark Enlightenment is a counter-enlightenment movement. The Dark Enlightenment. (I disagree with conflating the dark ages and the middle ages. Western civic society is largely the result of the late middle ages, not dark ages.)

2) The Cathedral includes the Academy, The Media, The State, The Deep State.

3) The Religion of the Cathedral is Cultural Marxism : Having failed scientifically (Scientific Socialism), Having failed organizationally (Syndicalism), Having failed through Postmodernism (lying) AND having started with demand for access to opportunity, expanded their demands to equality of opportunity, and having expanded their demands to equality of outcome, and failing because of the empirical difference in ability between individuals, the only solution was to import vast numbers of underclass people from the third world, encourage single motherhood, destroy the family, and create dependence upon the state sufficient that the state could take control of all functions in life.

3) Red Pill : Accepting the truth of the evidence of man’s behavior and abandoning the enlightenment fallacies.

4) Inequality and Diversity: People are empirically unequal, and Diversity empirically decreases trust and increases demand for tyranny. (The reason we are unequal is largely the difference in rates of reproduction of our classes. While homo-sapiens of the various races are similar, we vary in the success at suppressing our underclass reproduction. Those who succeed have advanced societies, and those who failed have impoverished societies. The cold solved this problem for us. The underclasses are a problem. Everywhere and always.)

5) Democracy: Democracy is the worst possible system because it is dependent upon lies not reality or scientific reality, and surrenders control to the lower classes and elites who pander to them.

CURT DOOLITTLE’S EXPLANATIONS
The purpose of the enlightenment:
0) To end the Aristocratic Rule of the Landed Monarchies, and the Landed Church.
1) To justify the middle class takeover of government (means of producing commons) from the landed aristocracy.
2) To justify the diminution of religion and religious mysticism in favor of science and reason, assisting in the middle class takeover of the government.

The Fallacy of the Enlightenment
1) That it was possible to create an aristocracy of everyone. It’s not possible because meritocracy is not in the interest of the underclasses. Parasitism is.

The Institutional Error
1) Instead of creating a new house for the middle class, and then a new house for proletarians, which would have made it possible for classes to conduct exchanges, we created a single house with majority rule and as a consequence, found that the lower classes, and women in particular had no interest in the aristocracy everyone, and instead, voted to incrementally destroy the aristocratic civilization we call ‘the west’.

—“That’s where the Politically Correct -shaming comes in. Making sure those that are not susceptible to lies are still brought under control by fear of social ostracism, loss of loved ones, deprivation of income and so on. The [progressives] are bastards, make even acknowledging the truth very expensive. “— James Santagata

They destroy truth to destroy trust, to create demand for authoritarianism in order to resolve conflicts, that could be resolved by truth, and as a consequence to organize society according to their will.

The purpose of that technology that we call ‘Truth’ is largely one of persuasion. The purpose of that technology we call ‘falsehood’ is largely the prevention of persuasion by imaginary, erroneous, biased, wishful, or deceitful means.

In any scale beyond the directly perceivable – meaning beyond no more than 150 people – we cannot rely upon persuasion but instead must rely upon falsification: reason not to do something.

There are few known goods. There are some known good processes.

At any scale assent is the default. Falsification by the imposition of costs not assent by majority rule.

I know I’m not the first person to say this, but it’s pretty clear that Russia is not only the ultimate expression of postmodernism (lying), but that it evolved to this state by reforming jewish strategy, philosophy, and law: destroy the trust of the outsiders in order to create demand for authority and group cohesion, thereby creating opportunity for predation.

While the founders of Russia were disproportionately jewish, and while their secret service was disproportionately jewish, what is more important is that the jewish strategy was useful for the Mongolian/Tatar/Islamic authoritarianism that is the source of Russian political culture. Russia combines ‘white’ people, Steppe totalitarianism, and jewish deceit (propaganda) as the complete economic, social, political and martial expression of the jewish strategy: destroy the higher trust societies and create demand for authority, and create opportunity for predation.

If we go back through history and see the success of lying created through zoroastrian monotheism: jewish, it’s revolutionary reformation: christianity, and it’s counter-revolutionary authoritarianism: Islamism, then it’s modern branches in Marxism, Western Postmodernism, Russian secular judaism, and anglo progressive pseudoscience and outright lying, then

We can not only cure ourselves, but we can disarm the world: TRUTH IS ENOUGH.

The Truthful and Trusting society may not be the end of history, but social democracy is certainly not.

There are three means of production of commons:
– Truthful and Trustful (libertarian: rule of law, civic society)
– Pragmatic and Utilitarian (social democracy)
– Deceitful and Parasitic (authoritarianism)

We have focused our efforts too long on the economy. Consumer capitalism has won the battle for the production of goods and services.

We no longer fight that battle. And focusing our efforts on it is a waste of energy. We won not by arguments but by resisting the state long enough so that the logically obvious could result in the empirically demonstrable: the voluntary organization of production is the only successful technology for the production of consumer goods and services.

Instead of the battle for a voluntary economy, the battle we face today is the suppression of parasitism in central bureaucracy and the expansion of trust and thereby increase of economic velocity.

We must create the non-parasitic voluntary production of commons just as we created the non-parasitic voluntary production of goods and services.

At present there is only one way we know of by which to destroy all parasitism, increase trust, increase economic velocity, increase prosperity, ad therefore increase choices. That is universal standing under the common law, the legal prohibition of parasitism, by mutual insurance: the exchange of guarantee of defense and restitution of property-en-toto.

But we must also provide for the construction of commons by voluntary means, by changing what is currently a monopoly constructed by majority ascent into a market wherein any non-parasitic exchange between the classes, or objective of the classes can be constructed.

We succeeded in transforming humanity into the voluntary organization of production of goods and services we call consumer capitalism.

Our next mission – purely out of self defense – is to transform our government into a voluntary organization of commons.

This project is eminently possible. It will forever render the corporeal state to the dustbin of antiquity, categorically relegated to another attempt at pseudoscience for the purpose of pure power accumulation and nothing more.

We have a very simple mission then. To reform every possible constitution such that the judiciary shall prohibit all parasitism without exception. And that the provision of commons be one of adjudication of differences, not of ascent. And that the defense of the realm be the province of every man, under universal standing under the common law.

At some point, it seems that greater intelligence is less influential than lack of wishful thinking, lack of accumulated error, accumulating knowledge, the time you invest in problem-solving, and choosing a narrow field of inquiry.

We believe true things, but largely we believe partly true things, some what true things and false things. Every time we USE one of these not-entirely-true beliefs to make a judgement, we produce, remember and habituate errors. We create a frame: “pattern of decision making”, worldview, and metaphysics, unconsciously.

One can be quite bright, but never express one’s intellectual potential for no other reason than accumulated error.

We all believe in unicorns.

The trick isn’t so much believing anything in particular, as it is not believing so much that is false.

Most smart people I meet suffer from wishful thinking and accumulated error.

ARISTOCRACY (PATRIARCHY) IS A CRITICAL RESPONSIBILTY: WE SET LIMITS. WE DON’T ENGAGE IN ADVOCACY. WE PRODUCE THE FIRST COMMONS: THE REQUIREMENT FOR PRODUCTIVE COOPERATION.

Our function is to incrementally but consistently evolve our people (and prevent their devolution) by preventing parasitism, and forcing productive cooperation. We force the development of markets for good and services by prohibiting parasitism. We force the production of markets for commons by prohibiting parasitism.

There is a great difference between RULE (conflict resolution) and GOVERNANCE (production of commons). Our function is to RULE (judiciary, rule of law, property rights, property en-toto.) The entrepreneurial aristocracy’s function is to organize PRODUCTION using the voluntary organization of production. Our gossip class’s function is to ADVOCATE for the allocation of resources to particular ends. But in all cases we must prevent parasitism.

It is epistemologically impossible for an aristocratic minority to police all of these functions for parasitism without tyranny. It is on the other hand, trivially easy for individuals to police these functions for parasitism without tyranny. The means by which we engage individuals in the process of policing is to grant them universal standing in the prosecution of parasitism, expressed as the right to property-en-toto, and to include them in the restitution under conspiracy if they fail to prosecute parasitism.

Our function is to create order by prohibiting parasitism- to create the first commons: cooperation (property-en-toto). Not to advocate. Others’ functions are to produce goods and services for the commons, and advocate for and produce commons.

YOU’RE DEMONSTRABLY INCAPABLE OF SELF RULE IF YOUR PEOPLE ARE RUNNING TO THE WEST.

Either fix your problem at home, hire us to fix it for you (it’s quite easy if you’re honest to fix a society). And if you do neither, out of defense, we must start a new program of colonization and modernization out of our own self-defense.

It’s not our burden. It’s our defense.

You have no right to externalize your failures.

And we have no right to externalize our failures (democracy and equality)

Curt Doolittle - Kiev, UkraineNot a Conservative, but a Radical
I am an independent theorist of Political Economy in the Conservative Libertarian tradition, and founder of the Propertarian Institute

What is Propertarianism?

Propertarianism is a formal logic of morality, ethics and politics – and the necessary basis for a non-arbitrary, value-independent, universal, body of law. One in which any and all political orders can be constructed; and with which all questions of morality, ethics and politics are commensurable and all moral ethical and political propositions are decidable. Propertarianism supplies the missing logic - the logic of cooperation.

Purpose

To convert western aristocratic egalitarian philosophy into rational and scientific terms:
Anglo Conservatism is the remnant of the European Aristocratic Manorial system and the Classical Liberal philosophy of the Enlightenment combined with our ancient indo-european instincts for group persistence and land-holding: truth-telling, the jury, and heroism.

This philosophy - which separates the west from the rest - currently consists as a set of sentiments rather than as an rationally articulated philosophy expressed in scientific terms. And without that rational articulation, conservatives lack the ability to create and promote a plan that is a positive and rhetorically defensible alternative to the hazards of accidental bureaucracy and purposeful socialism.

This lack of an articulated philosophy leaves conservatives vulnerable in the public debate with Schumpeterian public intellectuals whose advantage in both volume of production, and simplicity of argument poses a nearly insurmountable challenge.

Propertarianism solves this problem of supplying a necessary, sufficient, and formal articulation of western aristocratic egalitarianism in ratio-scientific language, and the means by which to restore our civilization to it's competitive advantage: Truth Telling Suppression of Free Riding, and The Construction of Commons.